


Thrust

by pettiot



Series: Threshold [18]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Do we call this kidfic?, Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-07
Updated: 2009-06-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:26:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22155487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: Balthier looks less like his father with his glasses off.
Relationships: Balthier/Fran (Ivalice Alliance)
Series: Threshold [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664512
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spawned from ff_fortnightly prompts. Dovetails into my Threshold series.

Balthier relies on his spectacles overmuch these days, silver frame hidden by matching hair. At his heels Fran finds room on the bunk; she sits, graceless. He rolls an uneaten apple against his palm, eyes lost to the horizon. Fran touches Balthier's anklebone. His trousers always prove too short.

The apple rises, falls, his catch as unconscious as his pitch.

'I must to port for the next few weeks, Balthier, for the birth.'

The angle turns lens to mirror: twin circles worth of sky look at her. Balthier's recent silence has not been as light as his tone now. 'Is this how you'll tell me you're pregnant, then?'

'Yet your sight is not so flawed--'

'Seems a man can't rely on anything these days.'

Fran is near gone, at the threshold when Balthier fumbles his catch. The Strahl rarely holds level; the apple rolls towards Fran before he can field it. She crouches, awkward, and holds bruised flesh tight.

Balthier looks less like his father with his glasses off. 'I'm too old for this.'

Two steps closer, and Fran could fold her hands over his. 'Age is no sin.'

'Nor excuse, love.'

Juice snakes sudden around Fran's fingers.

* * *

However opulent the room, the carpet is inexplicably sticky beneath Balthier's restless heels. Through the window beside Fran, he cannot see the city for cloud. Balthier looks instead at the fresh document before them.

'It's done. The child's future's is assured, whatever happens to me. To us.'

Ffamran's calligraphy looks a child's beside Fran's practiced hand. Basch steps forward to mark his witness and ordinance both, as magister. 'As wedded, will you not assume your still-waiting inheritance?'

'Beneath that contract of marriage is Ffamran's will. Everything to my legitimate offspring, and free of my touch.'

Fran looks out the window. 'If you would stay here, I would not object.'

'I will not stay here, not even if you would.'

Balthier's haste makes him harsh, regrettably: Fran's nod barely masks relief. 'I prefer not to birth our child in a city where we do not make our home. We fly elsewhere.'

Balthier kisses Fran clumsily, as though he never has before. Her belly swells hot against his; the child kicks.

'...fly very fast, presuming?'

Fran keeps his hand. 'As we always do.'

In congratulations, Basch kisses Fran's cheek, shakes Balthier's hand. All other bondage that pair leaves behind.

* * *

Fran suggested hammocks. In the Wood, the breeze swayed Viera pods to sleep and neither Fran nor Balthier could spare the horizon their eyes, the helm their hand. The Strahl's motion could provide that parental touch.

Balthier destroyed multiple melons resolving a hammock's flaws, satisfying himself that Fran's suggestion would perform. Even should the Strahl invert, all collisions proved prevented.

'Penelo hated my sketches.' He stood too close to Fran; he did not look at the chubby hand reaching over the bare shoulder for his spectacles' shine.

'Penelo does not fly.'

One infant per construct, Fran bound their twins in cages crafted for the sky.

* * *


	2. Unexpected

  


Balthier drafts. His focus may as well be circuit walls of double brick.

The twins are watching him. Fran watches them, the Strahl's logbook disregarded in one hand. The girls do not often show interest in sedentary pursuits. Eventually curiosity overcomes confusion: Cam circles thrice around Balthier with a wariness as though he performs black magick, as Gyro crawls beneath that desk and Balthier's stretched legs to gather: one dropped pencil (sniffed), one filched rule (licked), one small sheet of paper (marked with a dirty palm-print, but carefully not creased).

With a last neck-arching glance over Balthier's forearm, Cam returns to her sister's plunder and takes up the pencil, double-handed. Gyro watches the results with interest. After five minutes of production they return to the drafting desk with their offering.

Balthier does not down ink, but he pauses. He does not understand their children, has not from the day of their birth, equipped with tooth and nail and vocal capacity, uninterested in anything he thought they should be. Balthier glances at Fran as though to receive enlightenment for their unexpected emulation; Fran wonders if Balthier still thinks she always understands what he does not. Their children are not viera either. Fran does not think viera children draw at all, but she has no experience either way from which to judge.

Fran reads Balthier's frown as he regards that sheet of paper, the question he wants to ask being shaped and just as swiftly, being discarded.

'Thank you.' Balthier accepts gravely enough. The twins wear small smiles.

Fran asks what Balthier did not; she, too, can see nothing in the tangle of lines that makes sense. 'But what is it?'

Gyro says, 'A drawing.'

Fran asks again, 'But of what? What it is a drawing of?'

Cam repeats, less outraged than insistent, 'It is a drawing.'

Balthier clears his throat to try: 'I think you mean a drawing of a drawing. A drawing of me, drawing?'

'No!' Twinned insistence turns to frustration, ears set askance. Their withdrawal to the cabin door is a clear wounded retreat, Gyro scowling while Cam bleeds disappointment. One last parting sally comes: 'It is not of, it is!'

Balthier's lips curve, the smile restrained until the moment the door slides closed behind those angry twitching tails. (No dramatic slamming is possible aboard the Strahl.) Fran watches as he sets aside his pen, and folds that proffered sheet with some care to contain the scrawled chaos within upturned edges, and tucks it into his upper shirt pocket.

Fran lifts the logbook again, her stylus, returns to her charts, yet for some time sees nothing on page or screen. Her vision is unexpectedly blurred.

.

  



	3. Chapter 3

  


The alphabet blocks don't break Balthier's ankle the second time he trips: they shatter his temper. He shouts until Fran meets his gaze. Her right ear turns away.

In the hollowness after rage, something ashamed stirs.

Gyro puts down her B to pat his bruised knee, stickily. Cam headbutts his shoulder, sneezes.

'…please. No toys on deck.'

Balthier stalls the engines when Cam chortles, Gyro shrieking her delight. Balthier turns.

All the blocks bob buoyantly, in chaos, Cam and Gyro windmilling too, ears and limbs churning like wings. Fran spins an F cube to where four other blocks hover--

f l o a t

.

  



End file.
